


Dissonance

by pomegrenadier



Series: Stable Orbit [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Force Unleashed - All Media Types
Genre: (slight but significant), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Friendships, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 04:43:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18542512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pomegrenadier/pseuds/pomegrenadier
Summary: In the aftermath of their escape from theEmpirical,Juno's entire life has been upended, and Starkiller's mission has become all too personal. Neither of them quite knows what to do.





	Dissonance

**Author's Note:**

> This contradicts apparent canon in several places, notably regarding Juno's father and the timeline of the game. I'm aware, and it's intentional. Also Juno and Starkiller are both in their twenties now because I say so.
> 
> Kinda wanted to play around with their first wobbly steps in their respective Heel Face Turns, and give them some substantive interaction outside of/in addition to purely mission-related stuff. So here they are, wobbling along.

Juno frantically punches in coordinates for a short hyperspace jump, just far enough to clear the Dominus system’s gravity well. She holds her breath as the nice, distant stars twist into roiling blue, and only breathes again when they snap back into realspace. One prototype stealth fighter and crew, successfully not incinerated. Despite PROXY’s best efforts.

Which leaves her in the cockpit of a ship she thought she’d never fly again, sitting across from someone she thought was gone forever.

Starkiller looks exhausted. That makes two of them. He turns away from the viewport to look at her. “Hi,” he says, weakly.

Juno is shaking. “Hello.”

“Are you okay?”

“... Ask me again in a few hours,” she says. The answer will be a resounding no. She hesitates, then programs another jump, angling the _Rogue Shadow_ along the Outer Rim, avoiding Imperial hotspots. The ship’s engines howl. It’s not quite the same tone as her old TIE fighter, but she can feel the tension draining from her shoulders as the familiar noise surrounds her.

And then they’re moving, and that’s all she can do, for now. She lets her hands drop from the controls.

“Juno—”

“He killed you,” she says. “He ... he showed me a recording. I saw you die. I thought—”

“If it helps,” says Starkiller, with a hint of his old bleak humor, “I’m pretty sure I did.”

“Then how ... what happened? What did he—turn around.”

He stiffens. “Wh—”

“Turn around,” Juno says, gripping the armrests of her seat as if that will keep her from shattering. She has to see. She has to know that what she saw was real. That he’s real.

Starkiller doesn’t move for a few seconds. Then, carefully, he stands up and faces away.

Juno reaches out to lift the thin, almost papery medical tunic. She swallows. There’s a fresh, angry scar right over his spine, with oddly angular lines radiating from it. Vader stabbed him. It happened. He’s alive now because of quick medical intervention and what look to be very sophisticated cybernetics. It _happened_.

She takes a few deep, gulping breaths, slumping back. “Sorry,” she says. “I’m so sorry. Just. I thought ... I had to be sure you were ... you.”

Starkiller sits down again. “It’s fine.” He glances at her sidelong, nervous. “How ... how long was I out?”

Juno catches the awful, hysterical laughter before it can bubble out of her. She keeps breathing. “I don’t know,” she says. “They didn’t exactly give me a wall calendar while I was in custody.”

“Did they hurt you?”

“No.” They didn’t torture her for information, at least—because Lord Vader knew she had none to give. And they didn’t execute her, either, despite Imperial law being quite clear regarding the fate of traitors. She’s a traitor now. She’s a traitor because Vader decreed it so.

Vader had Starkiller’s frozen body retrieved and revived. He didn’t order Juno’s death. He destroyed her life, but he didn’t kill her, and this is all very convenient—oh bloody shitting hells she’s a _test_. She’s—

Juno feels sick. This was planned. Everything was planned. Does Starkiller know? Was he in on it from the beginning? But then why break her out? Why bother unless the escape was, on some level, genuine?

Vader killed him and brought him back to life. That was real. Then he came back for her. He came back.

He butchered Imperial soldiers with as little thought or hesitation as he slaughtered Kota’s militia, or Paratus’s golems, or Shaak Ti’s beasts.

Juno steals a glance at him. One act of kindness doesn’t mean very much at all. No matter how much she wants to believe otherwise. No matter how relieved he looks that she’s unharmed. She runs her tongue over her lips, then says, “Well. We should probably start by checking the date.”

She digs her old datapad out of its compartment under the dash. Starkiller leans in; Juno spends a gut-twisting minute or two waiting for the damn thing to boot up. And then it finally does, and she looks, and—six weeks. Just six weeks. It felt longer—six months, or years, perhaps. It didn’t feel real at all.

Starkiller drags a hand down his face and exhales. “Okay. That’s ... not as bad as it could’ve been.”

It’s almost as long as they knew each other before. Juno does laugh, then, and finds, to her horror, that she can’t stop.

**o.O.o**

They relocate to the booth just off the galley. Neither one of them seems ready to let the other out of their sight. Starkiller folds his arms against the starship chill and worries. Juno seems ... fractured, in the Force. Doubt, fear, helplessness bleeding through the cracks—circling and spiraling like a wrecked ship in an unstable orbit. Whatever happened in those six weeks, it was bad, no matter what form it took.

He doesn’t know how to help. Especially given—

“What are we going to do?” Juno mumbles.

He knows exactly what he’s supposed to say. He has his mission. He has no choice. “We could look for the Rebellion.”

“The Rebellion. Of fucking course.” Juno glares at him, anger lashing around her. “Because I’m a _traitor_ , so of course that’s—”

Starkiller flinches, then scowls. “Because they’re the only other option! And—and maybe they have a point. If this is what the Empire’s willing to do to someone completely loyal, throw you away because you’re inconvenient, like you’re nothing—is it really worth fighting for?”

She looks as if she’s about to argue, but then her eyes drop to his midsection and she just—crumples. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “I wasn’t thinking.”

It takes him a second to catch up with her thought process. Then he goes cold. “I meant—I was talking about you.”

“It applies either way,” Juno says dully. She rakes a hand through her hair—stringy and loose, nothing like how she kept it before. Then she huffs out a noise that’s too unhappy to be a laugh. “Where would we even begin? The Rebellion has survived this long because they’re slightly better at hiding than we—than the Empire is at rooting them out.”

“Nar Shaddaa,” says Starkiller. It’s impulse, the first thing that comes to mind—but the more he thinks about it the more sense it makes. And the more he feels as if something—the Force, maybe?—is pulling him there.

“A good place to get lost, but how does that help us find the rebels?”

“I don’t think Rahm Kota is actually, um, dead,” he says, face burning with embarrassment. “I definitely hurt him, bad, but then he fell and I didn’t get the chance to confirm the kill, and he said ... something about meeting again.” Sort of. Maybe. If Kota wasn’t just talking out his ass to throw him off-balance.

On second thought, this could all just be wishful thinking.

Juno gapes at him. “That’s it? A delusional old man’s dying words and a missing corpse?”

“... Yeah, fair. If you have another idea, I’m all for it.”

She comes dangerously close to snapping again. Then she closes her eyes for a moment. When she reopens them, she just looks tired. “I’ll set a course for Nar Shaddaa,” she says. Then she grimaces. “And then I will take a shower and get some bloody sleep.”

**o.O.o**

It’s four days to Nar Shaddaa. Juno manages to kill several hours that first morning inspecting the ship for hidden surveillance devices, signs of sabotage, and any other unpleasant surprises, then recalibrating absolutely everything from navigation to the weapons to the stealth systems. She should have done this the instant they cleared the Dominus system. No matter how fond she is of the _Rogue Shadow_ , no matter how much better she felt sleeping in a familiar bed on a ship whose engines sound like home, it spent over a month at their captors’ mercy. They could have done anything to it.

Juno has no excuse. She throws herself into the task at hand, disgusted with herself and intent on making up for it in diligence. PROXY offers his assistance with diagnostics; she accepts, if only to keep him occupied somewhere else. It’s unfair of her, perhaps, but reality feels too fragile right now to deal with a cheerfully murderous holo-droid who can decide to mimic anyone in the galaxy right down to their gait and speech patterns.

Around midday, Starkiller drifts into the engine room, where she’s busy reassembling the backup generator. He’s back in his own clothes, same as her; that, at least, is an entirely positive development for them both. “You all right?”

“It can’t be this easy,” she says.

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t find anything wrong. Nothing’s out of place, nothing’s been tampered with, we’re not being tracked—this is _too easy_. There has to be a catch somewhere and I can’t find it!” She slams the generator casing shut. He startles. Juno curses under her breath, bends to retrieve a fallen spanner.

“You’re ... scared.”

“We just escaped a top-secret research installation overseen by _Darth Vader_ and I think he let us go—so yes, I’m damn well scared!” Then she freezes. Oh hells. If Starkiller is in on whatever Vader was planning—

Starkiller twists at his fingers, thin-lipped and tense. “He sort of did. He brought me back and when I woke up he said—it doesn’t matter. But I was supposed to just take the _Rogue Shadow_ and leave with PROXY. Rendezvous with the _Executor_ for orders.”

“Then why did you rescue me?” Juno asks.

He just looks at her.

Juno’s jaw clenches. No. No, she is _not_ going to accept some vague silent implication, not now, not like this. “Why?” she demands. “Did Vader order you to do it?” She’s gripping the spanner as if it’s a knife and her heart is throwing itself against her ribs like a bird in a cage and why is she pushing like this when she knows full well that he could kill her, effortlessly, the second she becomes too much of a liability _—_

“No,” says Starkiller.

“ _T_ _hen t_ _ell me why.”_

“It just ... it would have been wrong. To leave you there. After everything.”

Juno frowns. Yet more implication rather than a specific reason.  A n inability to articulate  it ?  Or cover for an ulterior motive?

His gaze wavers; he looks away. “I’m sorry you got dragged into all of this,” he mumbles. He clears his throat and nods at the generator. “You’ve been at this all morning—caf break?”

Her first instinct is to refuse. To keep going until exhaustion forces her to stop. Leaving things unfinished is unacceptable. But ... she’s here, she’s alive, and she’s not answerable to anyone’s satisfaction but her own anymore.

Moreover, she’s _tired._ Beyond mere lack of sleep. She wants to go home and she doesn’t know where that is anymore. She wants something solid, something she can hold onto, anything at all.

She won’t find it in the engine room, or in the spiraling isolation of her own thoughts.

Juno takes a deep breath and sets down the spanner. She manages a faint smile. “Make that a full-blown lunch break and you have a deal.”

Starkiller returns the smile, small but, to all appearances, genuine. “Then it’s a deal.”

**o.O.o**

Lunch is vaguely edible ration packs and, of course, caf. Starkiller watches in horror as Juno dumps a third heaping spoonful of sweetener into hers, stirs it a few times, and takes a deep swig. She sees him watching and smirks over the rim of her mug. “You take yours dark and bitter, I suppose?” she says.

“Um. Not exactly,” he says, flustered. It’s a struggle to add cream to his without spilling anything, which is ridiculous—but Juno’s still smirking and the seething cloud of fear and anxiety around her is finally easing, so that’s ... good. He hopes.

They didn’t really eat together, before. The _Rogue Shadow_ isn’t a large ship, but it’s big enough for two people to stay out of each other's way. And while they were on good terms—better than the last few pilots—they weren’t friends.

... On the other hand, the one being in the galaxy he does consider a friend regularly tries to murder him, so his standards might be a little off.

He clears his throat. “Can I ask you something?”

“Depends on what you ask.”

“How did you end up in Black Eight Squadron?”

Juno’s eyebrows go up. “Doesn’t PROXY have my dossier?”

“He ... yes, but it’s just dates and places, not ... _you_. Um. You don’t have to answer.”

She hesitates, but doesn’t shut down. “Why the sudden interest?”

“We flew together for weeks, before, and it was—professional. Just the job. But now ... I don’t know. It’s not the same anymore.”

“You’re not wrong.” Juno tucks a lock of hair behind one ear—most of it’s pulled back again, but a few pieces must have escaped the tie during her shipwide recalibration spree. Eventually, she says, “Vader selected me personally. Straight out of the Academy. Top of my class—set a few records in the simulators, set a few more in open space. Apparently he approved. Black Eight was ... it was what I thought I was meant to do.” Her expression twists. “However long I lasted, at least. It had a rather high turnover rate.”

“That’s one hell of a risk,” Starkiller says tentatively.

“I am very good at my job. And if my death meant something, it would have been worth it.” She pauses for a moment. Then she exhales sharply. “Funny. I didn’t want to die for the Empire, particularly; I was just willing to do it, but now ... I think I’d like to live just to spite them all.”

Starkiller looks down. “Makes sense.”

Juno runs her tongue over her lips. “What about you? I know next to nothing about you, and I didn’t exactly get a dossier before we met. Where are you from?”

“I don’t know.” He scrapes a nail along the side of his thumb, staring at nothing. “I don’t remember much from that long ago. Before Vader, I mean.”

“... I see.”

“I think there were huge trees. But. Yeah.”

Juno hums a little, noncommittal, the Force prickling with something uncomfortable. She takes another sip of caf. “What do you do for fun?”

He shifts awkwardly in his seat. “Um. Training? Sparring with PROXY. Or, uh, meditating.”

“... Right.” Juno clears her throat. “Erm. Forget I asked.”

“No, that’s—sorry. I didn’t—”

“It’s not—”

They both fall silent, not looking at each other. Juno focuses on her caf; Starkiller pokes at his Imperial Navy-issue MRE without enthusiasm.

He gives up after a minute. “How about you?”

“Hmm? Oh—I read,” she says. Her expression goes strange and pinched, and her voice goes quieter. Self-consciousness fizzes miserably in the Force. “Terribly pretentious holonovels, lots of technical manuals, historical articles.”

Starkiller frowns. “Why would that be embarrassing? Those sound interesting.”

“Don’t.” Fear-irritation-anger and her eyes go narrow and cold.

He curses inwardly. Ordinary people don’t comment on each other’s unspoken emotional states; they can’t, not unless someone’s making it obvious, and most of them try not to. And he’s pretty sure she thinks he’s making fun of her. “That wasn’t—sorry. Uh. What kind of history?”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah.”

She eyes him warily for a moment, then looks down at her caf and sighs. “Anything and everything. The Clone Wars, of course. But also the ancient Republic. Sometimes even further back, but records become far less reliable.”

“When you say ‘ancient’ ...”

“Pre-Reformation—er, the Ruusan Reformation, that is. Although the Old Republic period does cover rather a long span of time—anywhere between one thousand and twenty-five thousand years ago.”

Starkiller blinks. “Ancient. Right. Wow.”

“Quite. I used to—” Juno snaps her mouth shut, expression frosting over again—but then it cracks, and the Force seethes with a kind of bitter reckless pride as she laughs and shakes her head. “Oh, hell with it, we’re traitors anyway. My father was—is—ISB. He had access to some rather sensitive records regarding galactic history, specifically the Jedi Order. I learned a great deal about slicing just to crack his files.”

 _You shouldn’t have done that,_ he doesn’t say. _That information is dangerous. It could lead to—_

Rebellion. Ha. Why should she remain loyal to an Empire that didn’t extend the same courtesy to her?

And that could be ... useful. A genuine independent streak—interest in Jedi history and willingness to dig it up—in a top-ranked Imperial pilot with Security Bureau connections? It’s perfect. She’s perfect. The Rebellion does love its nostalgia for the Jedi Order. They can use that, if and when they find Kota again, and maybe it’ll help get them an in with the larger Rebellion.

Starkiller hates the cold, shaky, squirming feeling in his chest.

He realizes that he’s been sitting there in dead silence long enough to make it awkward. Juno’s staring at him. He coughs. “Sorry. Just, uh, thinking. Um.”

“I was scared, at first,” Juno says with a gentle smile. Oh Force, she thinks he’s panicking at the idea of—of disobeying. The squirming feeling deepens. “Scared to even look at the files. But it’s ... well, to be frank, not all of the propaganda is inaccurate. The Jedi were meddlesome and arrogant and, over all, rather awful.”

Starkiller laughs nervously. “That’s not the usual line from sympathizers.”

“Under Republic law they had the legal right to take children from their families, if the child had a sufficiently high midichlorian count,” Juno says. “Apparently that was taken as ‘consent’ to be raised in a cult. I can’t really reconcile that with the flawless heroes the Rebellion goes on about.”

It’s cold. Vader? No, that’s impossible, he’s halfway across the galaxy. Starkiller hears himself say, “Then—then why did you keep looking?”

“Because they were also remarkable diplomats and warriors who maintained a stable galactic government for millennia. And that’s an interesting contrast. It’s rare for a conflict to be so simple as good versus evil. I don’t believe the Jedi were innocents, but I don’t believe they were complete monsters, either. The Empire—” She breaks off, scowls, and gulps down the rest of her sugary caffa bean sludge, anger scything through the Force. “I believed in the Empire. I knew so much about things I wasn’t supposed to ever even think about and I _still_ believed that the Empire was in the right, and now we’re— _fuck_.”

The anger’s not directed at him. It would be ... better, if it were. That would mean he might be able to fix it, apologize or make it up to her somehow. But all he can do is stand up and steal her empty mug. He refills it, dumps in too much sweetener, and sets it down in front of her again. He should probably do something more, say something comforting, but the squirming thing is in his throat, choking him.

“Thank you,” Juno says, surprised.

“We’ll figure this out,” he rasps.

“I certainly hope so.” Her smile is tentative but warm. “And I mean it. Thank you, St—oh, that reminds me. If we do find General Kota, what should I call you? Your callsign is, er, distinctive.” She pauses. “It also occurs to me that I don’t know your actual name.”

He takes a breath. “I don’t really, uh, have one. Or if I did, I can’t remember it. Vader just called me _Starkiller_ or _apprentice_.”

“Oh.” Another surge of emotion that he doesn't want to examine too closely, quickly buried; she composes herself and says, “Whatever you prefer, then.”

“I’ll think about it,” he says, to buy time. “It’s, um, it’s a good point, though. About Kota. We’re going to need to come up with a reason for the two of us to know who he is and approach him.”

“... I realize that the truth might not go over well, given how your last encounter ended, but is lying to a Jedi Master really a good idea? Won’t he be able to sense that kind of thing?”

Starkiller grimaces. “Also a good point. At least your story is probably okay as-is. You were an elite pilot who got burned by the Empire, and you heard rumors of a Jedi fugitive and went to investigate.”

“That does skip several important steps in the process,” says Juno. “And as desperate as the rebels might be, I doubt they’ll just accept something so vague, particularly if they learn about Black Eight. I’m not sure how much information Vader released, but if my last posting was mentioned, that’s going to complicate things.”

“Bad reputation?”

“War crimes,” Juno says. “Many, many war crimes.”

“Ah.”

She shrugs, but there’s a hardness in her eyes and a thread of something ugly in the Force. Something that writhes and rots and squirms. “This is all assuming we can even find General Kota.”

“Oh, we’ll find him.” He’s been hunting down Vader’s enemies for years. The only difference here is that he’s not trying to kill this particular target. Yet. Hopefully. Unless he’s wrong, and Kota did die after their fight at the shipyards. “For whatever it’s worth, you’re pretty convincing. And like you said, Kota might be able to sense that you’re telling the truth anyway.”

“Which still leaves you.”

No name, no cover story, and the truth about his origins would be a fantastic way to turn any meeting with Kota or the rest of the Rebellion into a bloodbath. _Hi, I’m Darth Vader’s absolutely one hundred percent_ former _apprentice and I’m here to help you._ Right. Because Jedi and Jedi sympathizers are so enthusiastic about all things Sith-adjacent. It’s not like the Emperor himself had to keep his true allegiances quiet right up until the Republic handed him the throne, or anything.

But. If he came from the other direction ...

“Juno,” he says, slowly, “how much do you know about the Jedi? Not—not the big political stuff, the day to day life.”

“Some, but it’s only fragments. Nothing like lived experience. Are you seriously suggesting posing as a Jedi?”

“I would’ve been pretty young when Order 66 went out.” He assumes. He thinks he’s in his early twenties, but he could be older, or younger. Putting a number on his age hasn’t really mattered so far. “So even if I was raised by the Jedi at first, I wouldn’t necessarily know everything.”

Juno tilts her head to the side, considering. “You know, that might actually work. If Kota doesn’t sense that you’re lying.”

“The Force doesn’t exactly pick up on lies. It can tell you if someone’s emotional state doesn’t match what they’re saying or doing, or if they feel like they’re hiding something, but it won’t tell you why, specifically. Your story works because it’s believable on its own and your reactions are right for someone who went through that. And ... I don’t know. A Jedi fugitive being a little cagey wouldn’t be too strange, would it?”

Juno takes a slow, thoughtful drink, tapping her fingers against the sides of the mug as she lowers it. “All right, then. I’ll try to teach you what I do know.” She shakes her head. “May the Force be with us both, I suppose.”

“Thank you, Juno,” he says quietly.

Maybe Kota will be in a charitable mood. Maybe Vader will only use him and any rebel allies he makes to harass the Emperor. Maybe Juno will never find out that he’s still serving the person who destroyed her life.

Maybe.

**o.O.o**

_ end _


End file.
